Palestinian Girl's Murder Highlights Honor Killings

They kill their own, too. And the world expects "peace"?

ABU QASH - Rofayda Qaoud - raped
by her brothers and impregnated - refused to commit suicide, her mother
recalls, even after she bought the unwed teenager a razor with which to
slit her wrists. So Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud says she did what she believes
any good Palestinian parent would: restored her family's "honor" through
murder.

Armed with a plastic bag, razor and wooden stick, Qaoud entered her
sleeping daughter's room last Jan. 27. "Tonight you die, Rofayda," she
told the girl, before wrapping the bag tightly around her head. Next,
Qaoud sliced Rofayda's wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of "No, mother,
no!" After her daughter went limp, Qaoud struck her in the head with the
stick.

Killing her sixth-born child took 20 minutes, Qaoud tells a visitor
through a stream of tears and cigarettes that she smokes in rapid
succession. "She killed me before I killed her," says the 43-year-old
mother of nine. "I had to protect my children. This is the only way I
could protect my family's honor."

The guilty brothers are in jail.

Qaoud's confessed crime, for which she must appear before a three-judge
panel on Dec. 3, is one repeated almost weekly among Palestinians living
in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel. Female virtue and virginity
define a family's reputation in Arab cultures, so it's women who are
punished if that reputation is perceived as sullied.

Victims' rights groups say the number of "honor crimes" appears to be
climbing, but at the same time, getting little attention. Israelis and
Palestinians are too busy with political and military issues to notice
what they dismiss as domestic disputes, says Suad Abu-Dayyeh, who works
for the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling in East Jerusalem.

Police in Israel investigated at least 18 honor killings in the past three
years.

Palestinian police reported 31 cases in 2002 - up from five during the
first half of 1999 - the last time such incidents were counted before the
current Palestinian uprising began, according to the center's study.

But the number of killings is likely higher, given that Palestinian police
investigate only crimes that have been reported, said Yousef Tarifi, the
Ramallah prosecutor assigned to Qaoud's case. Shalhoub-Kevorkian says her
past research showed the likely number to be 15 times higher than the
number of reported cases.

According to court records, Rofayda was raped by her brothers, Fahdi, 22,
and Ali, 20, in a bedroom they shared in the family's three-room house. On
Nov. 26, 2002, doctors at a nearby hospital who were treating Rofayda for
an injured leg discovered she was eight months pregnant.

Palestinian authorities whisked her off to a women's shelter in Bethlehem,
where she gave birth to a healthy boy on Dec. 23. He has since been
adopted by another Palestinian family, court records show.

Rofayda, meanwhile, wanted to return to her parents in the Ramallah suburb
of Abu Qash. Ramallah Gov. Mustafa Isa called a meeting with the family
and village elders, demanding they pledge in writing not to harm the girl.
"He asked me if everyone in the family and the village would promise not
to bother this girl, but I told him I couldn't give him a guarantee," Abu
Qash Mayor Faik Shalout says.

Rofayda returned home in late January without notifying the authorities.

The shame was unbearable, Qaoud said. Relatives and friends refused to
speak to her family. Her elder daughters' husbands wouldn't allow them to
visit because Rofayda had returned home.

On Jan. 27, Rofayda sent word that she was in danger to crisis counselors
at Abu-Dayyeh's center in East Jerusalem. They, in turn, called
Palestinian police in Ramallah, who have jurisdiction over Abu Qash.

Qaoud, meanwhile, sent her husband, who suffers from heart disease, to a
doctor in the nearby village of Bir Zeit. Her three youngest children went
to a cousin's house.

Qaoud turned herself in and, after four months in jail, was released
pending the resolution of her case.

While honor killings committed in the heat of the moment - for example, by
a husband who catches his wife in bed with another man - generally carry a
six-month to one-year jail term, Qaoud will likely be sentenced to three
to five years in prison, Tarifi says. The fact she is a mother who was
trying to protect her family's honor mitigates the crime of premeditated
murder, which is punishable by death under Palestinian law, he adds.

The brothers are serving minimum 10-year sentences in a Palestinian jail
in the West Bank city of Jericho for statutory rape of a relative, Tarifi
says.

No trace of Rofayda or her brothers remains in the family home. Qaoud says
she ripped up all of their photographs and burned their clothes. The
bedroom in which she killed her daughter is now a storeroom.

Erasing the memories is harder, she admits. She eases her pain by doting
on her three children still living at home, especially the youngest,
Fatima, 9, whom she lavishes with kisses. The children say they've
forgiven Qaoud and return her affection.

"My mother did this because she does not want us to be punished by
people," Fatima explains with a shy smile. Leaning into Qaoud's arms, the
little girl adds: "I love my mother much more now than before."

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